Mission managers late this
afternoon announced a nine-hour extension to the data-taking portion
of the mission. That means that mapping of the Earth now will continue
until about 6 a.m. Monday. Astronaut Chris Hadfield in Mission Control
relayed the good news shortly before 4 p.m. to Commander Kevin Kregel
and the rest of Endeavour’s crew. “That’s super news,”
Kregel replied. “I’m sure the folks at the Jet Propulsion
Lab and NIMA are really ecstatic about that.”

As of noon today, 88 percent,
or more than 42 million square miles of the target area had been mapped
once. More than 57 percent of the target area – over 27 million
square miles – has been mapped with two or more passes. Endeavour
images 40,000 square miles of land every minute. At that rate, it can
image an area the size of Rhode Island in just 2 seconds.

Scientists today released radar
images of the San Andreas Fault and the Rose Bowl area in southern California,
the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia’s Far East, and the Hawaiian
Island of Oahu. Scientists predict that the level of detail in maps
resulting from data collected during the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission
will help scientists better understand hazards such as wildfires, lava
flows, tsunamis and floods.

Science operations continued
smoothly through the mission’s eighth day, with all radar and support
hardware continuing to work better than hoped. “Everything is perfect.
It’s incredible,” observed Marian Werner, X-SAR project manager
for the German Aerospace Agency, which provided the X-band radar system
used by SRTM.

Earlier today, Endeavour’s
six astronauts gathered together for their traditional news conference,
answering questions from U.S. and Japanese reporters. NASA Administrator
Daniel Goldin and German Research Minister Edelgard Buhlmann also congratulated
the crew on the success of the mission and the potential benefits of
the resulting high-resolution maps.

EarthKam continues its outstanding
performance. It has nearly equaled the number of images produced during
its first four flights combined, with more than 1,700 images produced
thus far.

Endeavour continues to perform
smoothly and provide a solid platform for the most accurate and unified
topographical mapping of the Earth ever produced. The next status report
will be issued at 6 a.m. Saturday, or as mission events warrant.

###

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